Theatrically to Bristol & Peru, realtime in Wales & Frome

This is a good time for theatre enthusiasts. Restrictions now allow companies to find ingenious ways to rehearse, but are still tight enough for online productions to continue - and by now they're fairly sophisticated. So Bristol Old Vic is now offering Touching the Void as performed in "a bespoke sound-stage in its 255yr old auditorium which not only created the atmosphere of being in a theatre, but transported viewers to the mountain itself -from anywhere in the world." Devised by BOV director Tom Morris in 2018, this drama tells the true story of an outrageous attempt to scale one of the most difficult peaks in the Peruvian Andes, as explored from the perspective of a non-mountaineer marvelling that anyone would purposefully risk their life to purposelessly climb a crag. Which is most of us, I imagine.  In this dramatisation by David Greig of the book of the same name by Joe Simpson, the nearly-deceased climber, it’s his sister who takes the inquisitorial role, initiating the dramatic interaction by repeatedly asking why, until Simon Yates, the other climber, compels her to explore their drama via furniture & fittings and a vivid imagination. There's a good short summary here.  The initial, live & highly acclaimed, production came at the end of the Bristol Old Vic's long closure for a £26m renovation project so it's fitting that this revival celebrates the gradual ending of the plague closure. Fingers crossed, anyway. Fiona Hampton takes the prime role of Joe's sister, with Josh Williams as Joe and Angus Yellowlees as Simon, and Patrick McNamee as a random hitchhiker.  Set & costume design by Ti Green. (screen shots by me.)  

Also last week, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory offered an online medley of Shakespearean sonnets and speech extracts in a patchwork of recitations by 'five contemporary characters as we explore our relationship with our city and our culture.'  The Place At The Bridge is written - or rather, compiled - by Chinonyerem Odimba and directed by Helena Middleton, and has the immense bonus of constant accompaniment throughout by the brilliant Gambian kora player Sura Susso - here with Zachary Powell, an impressively strong presence throughout. (my screen shots.) 

Moving now from Peru via Bristol to Wales: to Tywyn, on the southernmost coastal tip of the Snowdonia National Park, an area of forests and lakes and - last week anyway - solid sunshine. Developed into a resort in the 1870s by benefactor John Corbett, it's now famous for its narrow-guage mini Talyllyn Railway which appears inspired by Rev W Awdry but was actually designed to service the slate mining up the hills in Abergynolwyn.  Slate is everywhere - even fences are sometimes made of slate.

Our basecamp was a well-equipped camper-van site between a broad, silvery-sanded beach rimmed by grassy dunes, and viridian fields filled with grazing sheep, extending to the distant undulating verdant hills. A lush scene.  And nearby, the amazing Dolgoch Falls descend across flinty rocks in a fern-filled forest, and a mere 4.7-mile-walk in blustery winds along the sand, there's the picturesque sea front of Aberdovey - 'front' being the operative term, as there's not much build beyond the line of gaudy buildings that look like Villajoyosa without the palm trees, but the cappuccino ice-cream is lush.

 We were back in Frome in time for the Saturday market in glorious sunshine, complete with Paul's Tribe busking on the bridge and for a sumptuous garden party hostessed by Frome FM broadcaster, podcaster, & all-round delightful person Eleanor Talbot. 

Silk Mill opened its doors at the weekend for an exhibition by artists in the Visionary Arts Collective: The Future Is Now features a diversity of psychedelic and visionary images in a range of media. Much of it is beautiful, even when menacing, like these extraordinary figures.

And there's welcome news from the Friends of Easthill that Mendip DC have agreed not to use this ancient field for their housing development.  This is a big relief in terms of preserving the green lungs and biodiversity of Frome but, as campaign initiator Bharati Pardhy wrote when reporting the decision, the need for affordable housing is still a community concern. And it remains to be seen how, and if, Frome can retain its independent integrity after the local government reorganisation. Fingers remain crossed.

A week of small screen, big poetry, & waterproof boots.

Starting from the end of the week, with the big event at the South Bank, where this year's prestigious - and lucrative - T.S.Eliot prize for poetry was awarded on Sunday to Bhanu Kapil for her collection How to Wash a Heart, as revealed after an hour-long presentation involving readings from all ten shortlisted poets. Ian McMillan, who introduced and steered this streamed version, promised to be live next year but I hope they continue to make this event available on line - it was beautifully organised, narrated, and presented, and the filmed readings were superb. All the poets' books were submitted before the start of the year, so it was impressive how many had a continuing relevance, and Bhanu was one of the most accessible, so it's good to see once again a confirmation that poetry is about life now, whoever we are. 

And now a poem about a local railway line: John Betjeman's jaunty evocation of Dilton Marsh Holt  as intriguingly performed by David Ellington for Wiltshire Creative and streamed, with optional captions to his signing, in their World Wide Wiltshire project. There are two other short pieces in this set, both reminiscent monologues, viewable here.

Frome's  Liv Torc, supporter of all things poetic,  hosted another edition of the Rainbow Fish Speakeasy cabaret from Yeovil's Word/Play group, always offering much to enjoy and this time featuring the ever-surprising & totally brilliant Chris White.  

 Chris came to Frome a couple of years ago to record a 'Word Play' session for Visual Radio Arts and he was unforgettable, though this session had to be deleted after intervention by the agent of another of the poets - a very sad loss to our developing poetry archive. Once again Chris's set was full of unexpected clever wordplay, chicaning between absurdity, profanity, and political satire, and I hope somewhere there's a recording of this event that won't be deleted. Followers of Liv will remember that her USP is collecting lines & phrases from her audience for a 'compilation poem' shared at the end of the event, and this was cleverly managed through the comments section by Jon. 

It's really good to see, also, increasing numbers of performers and drama communities exploring online options: Frome Drama are gearing up for their made-for-lockdown Terminus and Bristol Old Vic are streaming two archived shows - next up a Sherlock Holmes comedy/murder mystery.

And a reminder, in skinny days for interactive stimulus, of Eleanor Talbot's ever-vibrant talk show Variations on a Theme and Liv Torc's HAIFLU revival, a moving collections of our shared experience of this year, now in its third week.  Andy Wrintmore's Giant Pod has a US Inauguration Special, with Will Angeloro and John Nelson, deconstructing our 'turning world' as well as the ceremony from every angle including Lady Gaga's ballgown.

There's plenty of music online, as well as on Sky Arts, of course. The live blues session with Ruzz Guitar and Pete Gage at Frome's Cheese & Grain has twice been postponed now, but here's a taster of what we're looking forward to, with Ain't Nobody's Business. 

Following last week's theme of protecting our town from predatory developers: another at risk - as well as Easthill Field & Broadway allotments - is Frome river, where the footpath is under threat of inappropriate development (is there any other sort of development, along a riverside in a low-lying area notorious throughout history for its floods?) 

We're lucky to live in a town with such pro-active awareness to protecting and to celebrate too: there's a magical selection of bark samples you can view &/or download as a poster from the website of  Phil Barnett.

This was a week of wild weather in Frome: flood rain, sparkling frost, then fairyland snow, all looking amazing but limiting walking options, so I'll end with an image from today of the southern fields, seen from the edge of town.

Drama, poetry, conflict, and sedges

Creatives have been hard hit by this second lockdown, especially theatres. Here in the south-west, Theatre Royal Bath had no sooner re-emerged on the strength of handouts from the Culture Recovery Fund than their 'Welcome Back' season was paralysed again, but Bristol Old Vic enterprisingly added a live-streamlining aspect to their new productions. Hedda, created via the 'permeable membrane' (their term) of their Theatre School.  Chekhov's dramatic principle asserts that if a gun is shown in the first act then it must be fired before the end of the play and Hedda has two, which, combined with her self-destructive boredom, ensures no surprise in the finale here, even if you're not familiar with Ibsen's play. 

The filming angles were great, with plenty of full-stage views rather than soap-opera-style  close-ups, although for some technical reason there were also plenty of blurred moments while my system played catchup. Lucy Kirkwood's adaptation transfers the story to contemporary Notting Hill so some changes are essential (though possibly not Hedda eating the lost book) and the trainee actors did justice to the vying, lying, academics - Hedda's husband George and Michael Drake as handsome ex-lover Toby were particularly strong, and so too was Emma Hadley-Leonard as the woman who fascinated and enthralled everyone except herself.

A Friday night of verbal immersion now as four remarkable poets launched their new collections on Zoom: Frome's Claire Crowther and Bath's Carrie Etter were joined by Alan Baker and Vik Shirley in an extremely well-organised hour of fascinating readings. Alan, an editor & translator as well as poet, was launching his new pamphlet A Journal of Enlightened Panic, Vik's debut collection is entitled The Continued Closure of the Blue Door - samples of her work here - Claire's latest collection Solar Cruise has already been picked as Poetry Book Society recommendation. Claire is married to the renowned solar physicist Keith Barnham & these poems, all written on their sea trip to America, focus on meditations around his work - there's a sampler here and  some have been reprinted in the Fortnightly Review. 

Carrie's new collection is The Shooting Gallery published by Verve, extraordinary and sombre prose poems juxtaposing reflections on the WWII drawings by Czech artist Toyen with school shootings since the Columbine massacre in 1999.  These are also featured in the Fortnightly Review, but it was particularly powerful to see some of the drawings that inspired these pieces as Carrie read them with moving calm.

Frome Writers Collective's Writers on Radio session this week was on 'the art of revolting, and writing about it,' and opened with an interview with David Lassman discussing why Frome is famous for its riots - mostly legitimate protests, incidentally, as the food riots were inspired by the inflated price of bread, the 3-day riot at 1832 election was in response to blatant corruption, and the wool-workers attacks on new machinery were protests at the loss of essential income for the spinners. David doesn't emphasise rationals but he's really interesting on the facts. (Here's David in a clip from the Wessex Camera Club's coverage of our 'Rogues and rebels' walk in the last Frome Festival.) Among other intriguing features, Sian Williams recalled the 1980s Greenham Women's protest, and Suzy Howlett considered the etymology of 'riot' - the language of the unheard, as Martin Luther King so perceptively said. Good to hear Kaiser Chiefs' riot prediction again too.

Maybe because we all feel under partial house arrest, dissent seems to be in the air: Eleanor Talbot interviewed me this week about the thread of dissent that runs through my book Frome Unzipped, from Prehistory to Post-punk for her weekly show Variations on a Theme. Unlike David, who is reliably lucid,  my recall of dates is impeded by dyscalculia, unhelpful when discussing history... luckily Eleanor is a brilliant interviewer & editor. I'm on Episode 58, at 24mins-35.10, 46mins for 12 minutes, and again for 9 minutes at 1.09 - but you should listen to Eleanor's brilliant music choices too, like the sensational History Song from The Good the Bad & the Queen and (at 1.33) an amazing rap battle between Trump & Biden created from actual speeches by ERB (Nice Pete & Epic Lloyd). All seamlessly fused by Eleanor, here seen at the WHY gallery opening last year - another from-the-festival-album image.

Still with social conflict of a kind, the Workhouse Burial Ground walk mentioned in previous posting, one of Frome writer John Payne's projects, had a plug in The Guardian this week. This would have been one of the Frome Festival events, and John's pamphlet of poems The Few and the Many includes two tributes in remembrance.  And with live music on hold, we continue to  rely on Sky Arts, youtube, and downloading: this is Destination Unknown, by Pete Gage with Ruzz Evans on guitars and Mike Hoddinott on drums, from Pete's new downloadable album, with great advice in the title track: if you don't do it now then you never will. 

Ending this week's foray with an image from the extraordinary Oudolf Field at Bruton's Hauser & Wirth, where inspired planting has created a landscape for all seasons: the opulent colours of spring and summer morphing to a different glamour by late autumn, with starbursts of moon-pale grasses, russet stems of seed pods, and a few late, mulberry-dark, flowers.

From azure & gold to mainly grey..

How dark and cluttered England alway seems after an absence: pale pleated sky hanging low over endlessly cluttered terrain on the drive home from Plymouth. In Spain masks are mandatory for all public places, and after a month with this sense of safety, the 14-day requirement to withdraw was actually a relief while readjusting to the on-off policy that England allows. But Frome is all about community so I've attempted a skim-catch-up on how the enterprising townsfolk have maintained their creativity... and of course, the answer is: impressively. 

Words first: here's a link to Andy Wrintmore's Giant Pod  interview with Chris Bucklow, artist and art historian in which, as Andy says, 'We go down a rabbit hole of Chris’s complex and captivating theories about how his subconscious communicates with him via dreams, how we can learn to derive or interpret lessons about ourselves and get a better read on where our heads might be at.' Eleanor Talbot too has created several Variations on a Theme - interviews with a difference. Her recent themes were healing, hair, and 'sexy connections'. 

Hunting Raven Bookshop is maintaining its reputation for innovative energy, with a socially-distanced book sale at the Silk Mill this weekend. with two more planned.  

Frome Writers Collective is maintaining active support for an increasing membership, with a virtual writing workshop, story contest, and monthly meetings continuing on Zoom, with historian Peter Clark giving a talk on his new book, Churchill's Britain.

And - not from this patch, but poet Steve Pottinger is so well-liked in Frome that he's allowable - do check out Come to me now,, a reflection on nature and how life is always 'a moment you pluck between finger and thumb, a just-ripe moment...

Obedient self-isolation similarly precludes any report on this weekend's exhibition of visual artworks made by people in Frome during lockdown, Creation from Isolation, curated by the Edventure students, but there's a virtual tour here. North Somerset Arts group took a different online approach, with members' work posted in their Virtual Art Exhibition throughout the weekend. Masses of high quality work, in a wide range of media - here's a painting by Gail Mason, from 'imaginary 'Emotional Landscapes,' places that I would like to be, and memories of how it feels to be in nature.' - because I miss these colours. 

I narrowly missed the 6x6 exhibition at the WHY Gallery, selling cores of tiny masterpieces  donated in support of the charity counselling service that Jill Miller founded - particularly poignant in the month of the first anniversary of her death. 

The amazing Frome Street Bandits have responded to lockdown with a massively impressive display by the full clan of 'semi-autonomous anarchic syndicalist' instrumentalists in a piece they call Ca Fait Pas Mal (compilation credit Jez le Fevre). Premiered October 19th - a fullscreen must-watch, here.

Frome's individual musicians have been prolific in their online posts on facebook, both on their own pages and on the public group Open Micsolate (with an impressive 6,600 members, none of whom seem any more keen to retrain than Fatima...) - here's Guru in a Camper Van from Paul Kirtley and Shoreline by Jane Langley and friends, both original works. And there's a new album out any minute now from Phil Cooper: here's Over My Head, one of the tracks on These Revelation Games. 

And now as autumn arrives although the world still feels nowhere near normal, there are reasons to be cheerful: my pre-ordered copy of Staying Human from Bloodaxe Books (edited by Neil Astley) has arrived and hedges are spurting with vivid, glamorous, reassuringly ordinary, bunches of berries. 

  

 

Wake me up when September ends...

23 Bath Street is the unassuming name for one of the town's best pubs, especially in these difficult times when staff and premises struggle to create a space both welcoming and legal. The small upper terrace at the back is a great place to enjoy a cool drink on a hot day, and owners Lark & Toby well deserve the Arts Council grant they've been awarded as part of the Culture Recovery Fund. Last Friday night they gave us the popular Gundhi Brothers in a mission to Make Frome Fun Again, with a hybrid set of Bhangra combined with Hip Hop, Garage, Drum n Bass and Soul.  Table-discipline doesn't really allow for dancing, but can't stop a great atmosphere.

More music in another short-notice-while-we-can live session, also with careful social distancing, as host John again welcomed the Tribe to The Mill at Rode. This is always a lovely event, and the line-up this time included brilliant work from Jim Cook, the only man I know who can play two saxes at once...  music included some great blues numbers. Here's the line-up, with David, Paul, Steve, Chris Chapman, and Jim.

Moving to art now, with a fascinating exhibition at the WHY Gallery in Stony Street: Dan Morley has been painting butterflies, life-size and in immaculate detail and vividly exact colours. His 'boxes' of various species are exquisite, and there's a tale behind the prize of his collection, on camera obviously: the incredibly rare Large Blue, now a protected species which can be seen only on  Collard Hill.  Really worth a visit, to admire the paintings and read the story. Here's one of the 'boxes' - the one with my favourite butterfly, the Adonis blue. 

As September sunshine continues, the Silk Mill yard once again brought entertainment to the customers of 42 Acres fabulous al fresco meals, with a musical session from Paul Kirtley's shape-shifting 'Don't Scare Easy Tribe': this time Paul and David Goodman were joined by Ray Bradfield -with sound-man Steve on cajon from time to time. This was a real 70's style 'happening, triggered by the poetry event by the inspiration of Steve & support of 42 Acres' Jo Harrison and Sarah Callan, with drop-in additions too. Here's Sarah on the other side of the counter, with husband Vin Callan also commandeered... a really great session.

Meanwhile Frome artist Sarah Godsill has been using the summer to create snapshots commissioned from around the world. Sarah says her 64 snapshots from England, Spain, Chile, Canada, USA, Venezuela, Scotland, Mexico, Singapore, Northern Ireland have "kept me relatively sane over three months this very strange Summer 2020 whilst I've thought about each person or family as I worked on each section." - you can commission your own memory here: 

And prolifically-successful writer Clare Reddaway created a story-trip round Bath you can find here. This linear walk from Walcot Memorial Chapel to the Botanical Gardens has regular stops to listen to stories about the cityscape that inspired them, written by  local writers and read by the equally talented Kilter Theatre team.

Also in the wordy-information bit, I was interviewed on Tuesday about my book The Price of Bread by the inspirational Eleanor Talbot for her Variations on a Theme show on mtri - that's Mixed Tape Radio International, broadcasting in buzzy forward-looking places all around the world and thus, of course, Frome. We sat on River House Cafe terrace talking about the violence of the Troubles in Belfast, as the newspapers of the week featured lead articles about fears that the Good Friday agreement has become precarious because of the ignorance, indifference, and stupidity of our current leadership. Eleanor is an incisive reviewer and an excellent interviewer so I'll be interested to hear the broadcast result - with musical interjections - in a couple of weeks.

This will be the last blog from Frome, and indeed from the UK, for a while, so I've held it over to include Bottom's Dream from on Saturday afternoon on the Merlin's ECOS amphitheatre.  Devised by 2m Theatre with the aim "to create socially distanced performances during the current pandemic",  this  talented young company demonstrates how Shakespeare never goes out of date. Bottom, dreaming that a beautiful woman might fall in love with a donkey like himself, is maybe a more interesting story than the upper-class couples bickering in the woods, and this one-hour devised show cleverly uses Shakespeare's text with a shift of focus.

Ending with another session at the Silk Mill from Paul's tribe, now named Fair Play for Frome and raising money for the town's charity: sadly I missed some good guest acts as this clashed with the Merlin show, but arrived for the final hour - and a bean stew from the excellent cuisine of 42 Acres.